Speedlights & Speedlites, Second Edition: Creative Flash Photography at the Speed of Light 2nd Edition

A collection of reasonably technically competent but uninspiring advertising photographs. This should have been a pamphlet instead of a book. The writing is pedestrian and verbose and rarely comes directly to grips with the subject matter. The book desperately needs a Maxwell Perkins to do some serious editing and get the grammar and sentence structure under control.Howlers: "When you walk into a scene, you should first survey and assess your surroundings rather than relying on trial and error." Huh..? And this: "Since I spent so much time thinking about concepts that were eventually turned into photographs, I have had to develop systems that resulted in abstract but legible ideas." Say again. . ? And this stand-alone sentence: "Often custom or makeshift methods are just as good or better." No kidding. . ?If you're trying to learn lighting with speedlights, better to stick with Joe McNally.

Not exactly what I thought it was, but is still a useful book. I am happy with it. It has been useful to help me move into the digital age.

Very thought provoking. As a Nikon user, it was very helpful, considering that's what the authors use..

Its okay book if you are amateur and you don't have any experience how to use speed lights and use light for our works in photography.

There are many books on the market which purport to provide an introduction to flash but end up being just a set of photographs with a brief explanation of how they were created using one or more speedlites. This book ISN'T one of them! Where most books start with examples and simple recipes to follow, this one does what is generally skimmed over, it gives you the real meat right there in the first few chapters.To effectively use flash in the construction of your images you need more than just a recipe - you need to understand quite a bit about light, and this book provides a really solid foundation in the "must have" technical knowledge of how to understand the inverse square law, how to read your histogram, how to understand Exposure, and more. All of which is essential if you are ever going to figure out why the recipe went wrong!But it doesn't stop there! - this book has plenty more than just the dry technical stuff, it has an abundance of photographs and examples, with some excellent lighting diagrams and killer tips from three very experienced photographers. I particularly like the advice in the "mixed lighting" section to leave the room lights on to prevent the subject's pupils from dilating and thereby increasing the risk of red-eye.If you are looking for a very solid introduction, with enough meat to satisfy an expert, presented in a format that will be easily understood by a beginner, then you should certainly buy this second edition.In the interests of full disclosure the review copy was provided free of charge by the publisher.

It was difficult to get past the author's photographs, which are pretty poor. One doesn't especially want to find out how they achieved the effects!

great info on using speedlites

The Kindle format is really not suited for use on iPad with Kindle app. The text and the pictures are not in sync. Would be much better in PDF! Not worth getting in Kindle format.Amazon should fix this !!!!